


Nightmares

by cynassa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-25
Updated: 2012-05-25
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynassa/pseuds/cynassa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hallucifer is breaking down Sam. Gabriel unexpectedly appears, and Sam can only hope that he isn't yet another figment of Sam's imagination.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Maybe he imagined saving the world. Maybe it's Lucifer in his body, destroying the world and there's no Burger King anymore, and no apple pie. Maybe he's at the back of Lucifer's mind and this is his desperate way of pretending he didn't damn the world.</em><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: This happens somewhere between 7.1 and 7.09 (How to Win Friends..) so if you haven't seen that, this might not make sense.

It's been ages since he's slept through the night. Lucifer, wearing Nick's body, appears in his dreams. He's forgiven Cas, without being asked for it (he prays that Cas not be dead), but still curses him at those points in the night when he sees Dean's broken body, and Jess' black eyes and can't, _cannot_ , be sure that this time it isn't real. Dean's gone out, that’s all, he thinks. Hopes.

Maybe he imagined saving the world. Maybe it's Lucifer in his body, destroying the world and there's no Burger King anymore, and no apple pie. Maybe he's at the back of Lucifer's mind and this is his desperate way of pretending he didn't damn the world.

"You scream too loud," Gabriel then, this time. But not bloody and broken.  
"You're dead," Sam says, and imagines a doctor saying, _'You often talk to yourself, Mr. Winchester?'_ gently, _(don't spook the crazies)_ with concerned eyes. He watches Gabriel weaving something with clever fingers and thin silver thread.

"And I am talking to myself," Sam says, and adds, "Again." 

"You wish you were such a clever conversationalist," Gabriel replies promptly, and the thread changes color in his hands. Sam looks closely and realizes that the thread was constantly changing color, each tiny inch or half-inch was a different shade from the parts before. Interested despite himself, he peers closer and thinks- however small a division he uses, the colors change in even smaller divisions. Almost continuously, in fact.

"That catches nightmares."

"Huh, so you mud monkeys can be taught," Gabriel says, but when Sam glances up, his lips are twisted mischievously. 

"On occasion. What about you flying monkeys?" Sam asks, curious.

Gabriel is silent, Sam looks down, and the first of the pictures are appearing- it's his mother dying, then Jess dying, then Max, and his father's body climbing out of Hell, and Dean (a car running him over, electrocuted, by an axe, by a piano falling, by an arrow, the final death- Hellhounds feasting on his body) and Sam flinches back and makes a noise he doesn't hear, because his head is buzzing so loudly.

"Sam, breathe," Gabriel says sharply.

Sam looks at him and wants to break his nose, do anything really to see him bleed.

Gabriel looks furious for a moment, then one corner of those thin lips pulls down, making him look bitter. "I thought I could make you understand, show you what you would become," he says, and he sounds very tired. "I thought..." he tries to fling out one hand, but the gesture is aborted by the threads he is still weaving. “I thought I could trust you." 

Sam flinches again, he's got a speech prepared for this. Dean's version, Bobby's version, the version for the rest of the people who have had to deal with his failure. Those don't fit Gabriel.

Gabriel goes back to weaving, his eyes flicker over the scenes from Broward County, "It's easier for me," he says uncertainly, "to blame everyone else, but even the flying monkeys learn sometimes."

"After dying," Sam asks, he's too tired, too ashamed, to be skeptical but where does his subconscious come up with these things?

"After dying, we become a part of the cosmos we were built from. You can imagine it might be a little," Gabriel rolls his eyes, "humbling."

"Think of it," he continues, "As being grounded for ...how long has it been?"

Sam shrugs, "A couple of years?" he's still not sure on the time he spent without a soul.

"Really? Fun times," Gabriel looks surprised. He's sweating a little, Sam thinks, then dismisses the thought. Even in his hallucinations, there's no reason an Archangel should be sweating. 

Sam rests against the wall at the head of the bed. Watching Gabriel work is hypnotic, and the dazzling array of colored threads that seem to come out of nowhere and never end. He jerks up suddenly when he realizes that Gabriel is definitely breathing, and breathing fast and so there is no respite to be had. After all this is one of Lucifer's tortures (or it's his own subconscious, dammit all to hell - he can't be sure).

"It's ok, kiddo." Gabriel breathes out, gasping on the last word, "Just gimme," he breathes in again, with difficulty, "Gimme a moment."

A moment later, true to his word, Gabriel's stopped weaving and is holding up a flat square, with all of Sam's worst nightmares etched on it in tinier perfect squares. "A gift from Athena, to thank you for giving me wisdom," Gabriel's grinning like it's a fine joke, but a little true too. He's still breathing but slowly now. "I had to be my pagan self to make this, and pagans are more powerful the more they are human."

Gabriel tosses it at him and Sam gasps. It's a warm, pulsing thing. Wild but _safe for you/ _, it reassures and says, _sleep, you can sleep, safe___ and Sam is tempted, so tempted. 

Gabriel's frowning at it, "It needs something more," he announces. Then Sam hears the sound of beating wings and is surrounded by light. It isn't white, though there's white in there, and red, and blue, and green and turquoise and others he wouldn't know how to start naming, that there probably aren’t any names for, and they're all reflected in the dreamcatcher in his arms. 

"Your wings, you made it from your wings," Sam says, quietly, awed.

Gabriel flushes and says dismissively "Thank me with sexual favors," and plucks out a single feather from the darkest part of his right wing. Sam offers up the cloth, but Gabriel moves to place the feather over his throat, so that it lies over his Adam's apple and moves down over the vee of his collarbone and the tip lies on his chest. Gabriel glances up, and Sam is awed again to realize that he's asking permission and nods because he can't trust himself to speak.

The feather burns into him briefly, and now the gift feels less wild; less the master, more the pet.

Sam says, "I want..." and shuts up. Wonders whether he really is enough of a masochist that his mind comes up with such things on its own. Lucifer doing it would make perfect sense, he'd have more fun when there is some hope left to destroy. 

"Sam, you bonehead," Gabriel says, sounding exasperated, but Sam's already half-way to asleep.

When he wakes up, he feels the woven cloth before he sees it.

He sees Dean looking guarded and hopeful. Castiel is _there_ , in some sort of blue shirt beneath his trusty trenchcoat (and hadn't Dean picked that up, back at that lake?) and with his hands folded together at his waist in a nervous manner.  
Sam sits up, his heart beating hard enough to hurt and there, at the doorway to the room, stands Gabriel. For the first time in years, Sam feels carefree, and he beams.  
Dean mutters, "Oh, yeah, you've lost it," but he's smiling too, and Cas looks a little relieved and very confused. Gabriel's expression doesn't change at all, if you don't count his eyes going from yellow to gold but Sam's throat warms up briefly in the pattern of a feather.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written over at comment_fic but I'm not sure who it was for.
> 
> Prompt was: [Sam] He doesn't think there's enough colors named to describe angel's wings (yay wing!fic!)


End file.
